


Memories

by whitchry9



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Feels, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 10:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5086807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories were dangerous. He learned that quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

 

There were always fragments. But before now, they'd never been worth putting together, not when they were all sharp and dangerous and cut his hands every time he reached for one.

Well, they cut the hand that could bleed. The other one just became covered in red.

 

So it wasn't that he didn't have the memories, because he probably did, somewhere buried and deep, fragmented and shattered, maybe to protect himself from them. He doesn't know, because he can't remember.

 

He knew what happened the other times he'd started to remember.

“ _But I knew him._ ”

“ _Wipe him and start over._ ”

 

Memories were dangerous. He learned that quickly. Memories hurt, memories got him hurt, and were good for nothing.

But that's just what they wanted him to think.

 

Because even though they hurt, even though they sliced his hand and covered his arms in blood, the memories weren't as bad as they'd wanted him to believe. Not like they'd trained him, brainwashed him to think.

This time, he kept going. This time, there was no chair, no wiping, no freezing. This time he was a free man, albeit on the run from half the country.

But there was no one telling him he couldn't remember. And that was a right he'd fought for for so long.

 

So he did.

 

He gathered the memories up, ignoring the stinging in his hand and the blood dripping down his arms, and he patched the memories into something that made sense. Like a mosaic or a puzzle without all the pieces. He wondered if he'd done it right, or if he'd put things together that didn't belong there. Perhaps there weren't enough pieces for him to form a picture. Maybe he was only fooling himself into believing he could remember, that he could reclaim what had been taken.

 

But there was enough.

 

“ _The thing is, you don't have to.”_

 

“ _Sometimes I think you like getting punched.”_

 

“ _How could I? You're taking all the stupid with you.”_

 

“ _I thought you were smaller.”_

 

“ _This isn't payback, is it?”_

 

“ _Hell, no! The little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him. ”_

 

“ _The procedure has already started.”_

 

“ _But I knew him.”_

 

“ _I'm not gonna fight you Bucky.”_

 

“ _Then finish it. Because I'm with you to the end of the line.”_

 

Memories after that point were clearer. Life became about survival, hiding, recon. Those things he knew how to do. He was good at blending in, sleeping rough, finding ways to get food. He'd done it before on missions, when it was required of him, and as for skills, well, those memories didn't fade. He wasn't sure if they left some of them on purpose, or if there were some things that just couldn't be removed.

 

He always seemed to know how to hold a gun when he woke up, how to dismantle it and put it back together without so much as looking at it. He knew languages he didn't remember learning. He wondered just how much of his life had been stripped away from him in painful trips to the chair. It had been so long.

 

They turned him into a weapon. Stripped away the parts of him that must have held humanity, and left only the skills, the force and the pain and the knowledge.

He hopes he had humanity before.

 

But standing at the Smithsonian, looking at the display about the man he was supposed to be, he decided that it didn't matter who he had been, or who he was now. He was going to burn those fuckers to the ground for what they had done, not only to him, but to everyone else they had hurt.

For all the people he had hurt.

He was going to destroy the organization that had taken so much from him, and while he was doing that, he was going to patch his memories back up as best he could, cut hands be damned. And then when he knew who he had been and what had been done to him, he would create himself anew.

 

Because Bucky didn't exist anymore. Bucky had been a kid who went off to war.

Someone else came home.

 


End file.
